Sweat, baby, sweat...

Alright. I may have been a bit hasty with my dismissal of Nintendo's stock price rise.

The reason for this crimson-faced volte-face can be summarised in two simple words: Billy Blanks. For  those not au fait with the self-induced sweatiness of fitness-crazed Japanese ladies, a word or two of explanation. Billy Blanks is a 52-year old motivational martial arts entrepreneur who, in search of a flashy new name for a frenetic workout video crossed Tae Kwondo with Boxing to create Tae Bo. (The world will never know how different things might have been for Billy  had he opted to call it "Kwoxing".)

Anyway, after a few dismal film appearances - he excelled as Black Rose in the 1989 chop-socky flick "Bloodfist" - Billy struck gold in Japan. His DVD fitness series "Billy's Boot Camp" has just, astonishingly, sold its millionth copy. And all it took was a relentless 6-month television campaign on daytime cable television...

To describe the contents of the DVD is somewhat tricky without spoiling the surprise for potential customers. The workout has a faintly sinister feel to it, with shots of Billy in his fatigues barking out fitness orders to a phalanx of pained-looking women and, of course, you slackers at home not keeping up with me! Hoo-Ha!

But who am I to argue? This particular breed of rough authoritarian treatment, it stings me bitterly to say, seems to be precisely the tone Japanese women want when they are being told to "give me another ten kicks...and two, and three and four...."

But where does this leave Nintendo? Well, you're talking to a Brit who remembers with a thrill of 80's  nostalgia, the morning workouts led by "Mad" Lizzie Webb on ITV's morning television show, TV-AM. (There she is, pictured on the right with two nice gents from the Chippendales). I know, and have seen first-hand, the power of fitness-through-the-television.

So I think that the success of Billy's Boot Camp tells us an awful lot about the propensity of at least one million Japanese to dance around in front of their televisions building up a sweat. And there's every chance that the only thing stopping another few million buying into the Billy Blanks phenomenon is that the box set of Billy's Boot Camp costs around Y12,500.

So, to follow this argument through, how big do we think the potential market for Wii Fit (or whatever Nintendo are going to call their sweat-through-the-console software) is going to be? More enormous, I venture, than Billy Blank's grin as he counts the zillions he has made in Japan.

Comments

[Aragoto]

Billy's manner may not be so much the key to his success as is the promise of instant efficacy that his aggressiveness implies. Japanese consumers aren't going to commit to something that looks like it might take time and persistence. (Ironically, the result is that a lot of freshly inducted Billyites who haven't exercised in years suddenly overstretch hitherto dormant bits of their anatomy and head groaning for the sidelines, never to return.)

Nintendo, unlike Billy, will have to pitch its software fairly cautiously to avoid a rash of product-liability lawsuits relating to injuries from overzealous exercising. Therefore, the package is likely to be pretty tame and difficult to drum up interest in.

...although the novelty of a fitness game will doubtless overturn that reasoning in a trice.

Incidentally, the name Billy Blanks sounds like a porn antihero, constantly limp at the crucial moment.

[Phaedrus]

@ARAGOTO - Product liability lawsuits? You're joking, right? No-one sues dumbbell manufacturers or yoga book publishers, and no-one's going to sue Nintendo if they pull a muscle using Wii Fit.

And as for blanket statement that the Japanese consumer doesn't commit to things that that take a lot of time and persistence, you might want to consider the time, money and effort that go into sado, kyudo, or any of the martial arts. Or eikaiwa. Or the even dudes playing dance-dance revolution for hours on end. Or any sport or hobby in Japan. I've never seen a country where time and persistence are taken to such extremes as in Japan.

[Aragoto]

Phaedrus, Nintendo has already been hit with a class action lawsuit in the US for the issue with Wii straps breaking, so while my tongue was in my cheek when I wrote that, it wasn't all the way in.

I think you may be overstating the extent to which anyone outside a small circle of dedicated practitioners really spends much time on either traditional arts or sports. And I would argue that eikaiwa for most participants has the status of a low-level hobby (compare Japan's English-learning population with its TOEIC scores, and then compare with Korea, for example) and demands little commitment beyond paying the money and showing up. But, more to the point, we're not talking about sports or arts or education; we're talking about fads in fitness, which Japan metabolizes almost as quickly as it does idol singers or other pop-cultural blips.